If there’s one thing that I am committed to in this lifetime, it’s to really know myself, and to live the truth of who I am. My love for and devotion to my personal and spiritual growth comes from this commitment. It’s been a lifelong journey with many twists and unexpected turns.

It’s been filled with laughter and tears, fears and triumphs, and more beauty than I could ever have expected. My commitment to know myself fully has most recently introduced me to parts of myself that were forgotten long ago. It’s been a sheer delight to be reunited, once again!

As I’ve discovered more about who I am, I’ve become a happier, healthier woman. I’ve allowed more beauty, joy, wealth and abundance into my life, and I feel more aligned with what I believe my purpose is.

I believe that we are all here to really know ourselves, and to live the truth of who we are every day. But I’m also aware that there are many ways that women have been, and are still encouraged to ignore, doubt, deny, and disregard who they really are.

For many years I was incredibly detached from myself. I couldn’t have told you what I really wanted, or what I really liked. It took incredible courage, and many years, for me to get really honest with myself, and others, and to start living my truth every day.

So many women are disconnected from their true preferences, needs, desires and requirements. Living a life where you can’t feel yourself and what you want makes it nearly impossible to live a life that reflects what your heart really longs for.

Most women are caught up in trying to live up to an ideal that makes them feel like they have to prove their value and worth. It’s a bit like women have been brainwashed out of their wisdom and knowing, and have been instead lead to believe that someone outside of them – an “expert” of some kind – knows better than they do.

How do you know if you’ve become disconnected from truly knowing yourself? Here are some clues:

• You don’t state a preference, but instead wait to see what others are doing and follow their lead
• You place more importance on other people’s opinions than your own
• You fill your time and life with things you think you should be doing
• You don’t know how to hear your intuition, or you override your intuition – with frequent negative consequences
• You allow the worry and fear of what others might think or say about you influence your decisions and choices
• You don’t know what you want or how to ask for what you do know you want
• You feel like you never get what you want
• You dismiss the messages from your body – when you’re tired, hungry, thirsty, uncomfortable, in pain, need to slow down, or require more pleasure
• You habitually compare yourself to others and judge whether you are superior or inferior to them
• Your self-worth is based on how much you achieve, accomplish and do every day
• You feel easily exhausted, drained, and overwhelmed

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all of my years of working with women and through my own personal journey, it’s that the biggest source of exhaustion in a woman’s life comes from not being who you really are. It takes a lot of energy to wear a mask and live your life as if you’re someone you’re not.

So how do you begin to know yourself? How can you start living a more authentic life? It’s actually easier, and more enjoyable that you might think!

1. Take the time to discover what feels good to you. Are there things that you do out of habit that don’t actually feel good to you? Maybe it’s something that you learned as a little girl, or something that you read in a magazine, or maybe it’s something you were told to do by an authority figure or someone you trusted. Does it actually serve you do keep doing something that actually hurts?

   When you begin to understand what feels good to you – maybe it’s a minimum of 8 (or nine!) hours of sleep a night, or taking a 5 minute dance break every 90 minutes during your work day, or eating a piece of raw chocolate with your breakfast 😉 – you learn a lot about yourself and what supports you in being your best self.

   What feels good to you is going to be unique to you. It’s your job to discover what feels good and to do more of those things. Just think about how much pleasure this is going to add to your life!

2. Start letting go of the things in your life that don’t feel good to you. When you begin to discover and do more of what feels good to you, you’re also going to uncover the things that no longer feel good. As you increase the number of good feeling things in your day, week, month and year, they will automatically start “crowding out” the bad feeling things. Over time, your life will start looking and feeling better than ever.

   But here’s the thing – some of the things that don’t feel good will be challenging to let go of because they feel familiar and it’s what you know. They might include things like long-term friendships that you’ve outgrown, or family traditions that feel outdated. Maybe it’s a job that provides a level of personal and financial security, or something in your diet that you’ve become attached to. Maybe it’s a way that you over-schedule your days, or keep yourself too busy because you feel powerful and productive when you live your life this way.

   The bottom line is that if your happiness and health are suffering because of these things, something has to change.

   Learning to TRUST the things that feel good, and believing that your life – all of it – is supposed to feel good requires you to let go of struggle. Sometimes this can feel scary and not everyone is ready for this. But if you’re committed to knowing yourself, this is part of the journey.

   Just imagine what your life could look and feel like if struggle was no longer a part of the picture…!

3. Raise your standards – not once, but consistently, over time. Once you learn what you like and what feels good to you, and once you let go of what no longer feels good, your life will start to open up and feel magical. Truly!

   You will also become aware of the low standards that you’ve held for yourself in the past, and you will naturally want to raise those standards. You will feel drawn to take better care of yourself and to have every nook and cranny of your life feel amazing, intoxicating, and like a dream come true.

   All of this, and more, is what is possible when you give yourself permission to really know yourself.

   How amazing will it feel to use your pleasure, happiness, and health as the path to getting to know yourself? This gets to be fun, magical, and even playful… if you will allow it to be.

   How does this sound to you? I want to hear from you! Leave a comment below and let me know how this sounds to you.